seobridges.com

Hootsuite uses it, Scribd uses it, and several other sites use it to be more search bot friendly and interactive for users. Here’s a list of the most social link types, attributes, and elements in HTML5.

Article Element – This tells search bots when content is related to other content, such as with blog comments.

Cite Element – This cites sources and is a great way to give credit where credit is due.

KBD Element – Under certain circumstances, this can be used as a voice command.

Embed Element – This represents integration with non-HTML points, such as applications or other interactive content.

Link type “Author” – This can be used with link, a, or area elements and creates a hyperlink. When used with the a or area element, it indicates further information about the author of the article. When used with the link element, it indicates information about the author of a page.

Link type “Help” – This can be used with link, a, or area element and indicates that the referenced document provides help. When used with the a or area element, it indicates help for the article. Within the link element, it indicates help for the page.

Link Type “Pingback” – This may be used with the Link element and creates an external link resource to let authors of other blogs or articles know you referenced their information.

Accesskey Attribute – This generates keyboard shortcuts that activate elements.

If you’re an SEO, you should know the basics of HTML, and you should be aware of the upgrades in HTML5. If you don’t, W3 Schools is an excellent place to learn.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

With the rise of social media curation tools like Storify , the value of what you tweet and post on Facebook is becoming largely dependent upon the relationships between the category of your website and the categories of the website(s) your tweeting or posting about.

Right now, if I Google ‘Social Media,’ I receive 161,000,000 hits. If I search for ‘Social Media’ within the last 24 hours, I receive 56,400,000 hits. It would take countless wasted hours to sort through all of those hits.

Google categorizes your site according to the anchor text, title, and keywords in the URL of your site’s pages. They also use the anchor text, title, and keywords in the URL of sites you link to to determine how relatable your site is to that topic.

So, if you want to find the most relevant blogs and articles on any given topic within any period of time, use the search parameters allinanchor:seo+content, allinurl:seo+content or allintitle:seo+content. You can also use a combination of those three if you want very specific results.

The Web is becoming more and more dependent upon relationships. Not just relationships between people, but also relationships between websites. Go through your website and consider the keywords in your anchor text, url, and title. Consider the same of sites you link to, tweet, or post on Facebook. Finally, consider their relationships and the the relevancy of their relationships to the overall message of your site.

For more on how to get the most out of Google, check out this Free Search Guide.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Our Free Search Guide lists 19 search factors users can use on Google to deliver more personalized results to save them time and money, increase their efficiency and profitability, and lead to better search and user experiences for everyone.  Google is the most popular website in the U.S., but so few people realize its absolute power.

The search factor we use the most is the “Related” factor.  If you find a site you like, and you want to find more like it, type “Related:http://www.anysite.com”.  Some of the results may have nothing to do with the original site, but the feature is meant to be like “Similar” button on your Google results page.

You can also use the “Related” factor to find similar sites with a specific features.  For instance, we wanted to find a site like Constant Contact that allowed us to keep in better touch with our friends and fans on Facebook.  We typed “Related:http://www.constantcontact.com Facebook,” and the first result was VerticalResponse.com.

We offer a personalized search engine on our Free Search Guide page.  For now, it is tailored to people who want to search for anything to do with SEO, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Technology, and other related searches.  We will update it within the next several weeks, and we’d love to know how we can make it more user friendly for you.  Of course, we may add another search engine or two for those users with different purposes.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Today, let’s look at how you can use your Facebook visitors to determine what types of people are visiting your site.  If you didn’t read my blog yesterday, you might want to read yesterday’s blog Welcome to Google Analytics Sniper Training School before you read today’s blog.  For those who read yesterday’s blog, after you’ve figured out what pages or blogs people are going to on your site from Facebook the most, determine what about those pages or blogs attracts people.

Once you select Landing Page and Visitor Type, two more drop down boxes will appear.  You can use those tabs to find out more about your new and returning visitors from Facebook, such as how many pages those users who visited particular blogs visited, the average amount of time they spent on your site, the average bounce rate, and more.  Most visitors to my site from Facebook go to my homepage, but I determined my most popular was Using Google Analytics as a Social Media Monitoring Tool.

Once you’ve determined which of your blogs receives the most amount of attention from your Facebook friends, open a new tab to determine how those visitors interacted with that blog compared to visitors from other sources.  To find this go:

Content >> Top Content >> Find that blog from the bottom, right section of the page

That blog was one of my more popular blogs with all my visitors.  When you click on it, you can compare visitors to that page from Facebook to visitors to that page in general.  My Facebook friends seemed to appreciate that blog more than visitors from elsewhere, which means I might want to write more blogs like that to attract more of my Facebook friends.

Again I can use this method to find out more about people who visit my site via Twitter and other social networking sites.  Of course, I can also use this method with people who find my site via search engines, but unless that person leaves a comment you can’t interact with that person.  Okay, so you may not be able to interact with people who visit your site via social networking sites unless they comment on your blog or retweet it or other.

Though, regardless of whether you have 100 or 5,000 friends on Facebook and 10 or 20,000 followers on Twitter, a certain type of person befriended you or follows you.  I mention this to say that just as those blogs that were the most popular to my Facebook friends are my most popular blogs all around, people who befriend and follow you are a pretty good barometer of the type of people who are coming to your site via search engines.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

After you’ve identified which pages result in your highest bounce and/or exit rates and you’ve fixed those pages, move on to see where you’re getting the most love from.  If you’re watching your analytics on Google, they categorize your visitors according to direct traffic, search engine traffic, referring sites, and other.  If you’re unsure of what these are, I explained them in this blog: The X and Y Factors of SEO.

Since everyone knows search is dead, you can disregard what your analytics says about Google sending the most (or a large portion of) traffic to your site.  All Web analytics platforms have just not updated their systems to show that search is dead, and Google (being dead itself) is of course going to tell you that they send a large portion of traffic to your site.

If you’re name is Sheldon Cooper, you probably didn’t get that that last paragraph was sarcasm (Bazinga!).  For the rest of us, since a large portion of our traffic comes from search engines, we want to pay attention to our content.  I blogged about this last week in a blog titled, Google Analytics and Keyword Density.

The point is to figure out who’s sending you the most amount of traffic and pander to their every whim.  Okay, don’t pander to their every whim, but figure out what you’re saying that attracts people from those sites to your site.  What specific blogs or pages are they going to?  What are you talking about?  Talk about those topics more.  What are they talking about?  Answer their questions, and involve them in discussions.  Find out what the people want to know, and tell them what they want to know.  It’s that simple.  Kind of.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

For anyone new to the concept of SEO, that is an acronym for search engine optimization.  If you are referring to a person who engages in search engine optimization it can also stand for search engine optimizer.  With that said, an SEO does not simply write SEO content, rather an SEO does whatever is necessary to make sure your site is optimized for the search engines.

So, let’s take a quick look at link building, which is one thing an SEO does to optimize your site.  Remember that quote by John Donne, “No man is an island”?  Well, all websites are islands until you start building bridges.  Think of Google, Bing, and the other search engines like the main land.  They can’t get to your site, or even see that your site exists, unless they can cross the Internet waters by link bridges.  And the more link bridges that connect your site to the mainland, the more often they’ll visit you.

Do you have a blog?  No!  Well, guess what.  The search engines love blogs.  Sure you can find a site like yours, write them an e-mail, and ask them if they want to exchange links with you.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but I would not spend too much time doing that.  Writing those e-mail takes time and are often just a little more than fruitless.  The best way to get links to your site is to write good content for your site that will attract readers who will want to link to your site.  That’s it for today.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Yesterday, I went over to a friend’s house to help her with some questions she had about SEO content.  She uses a service that gave her the tools to learn how to do everything she needed to theoretically do to get her site ranked first on Google and other search engines.  The service seemed good, her site was well designed, and she had enough tools and tutorials to keep her busy.  She just didn’t know where to start.

If you want to do your own SEO, start with a keyword tool that gives you suggestions of words to put on your site.  Just take two or three of your initial keywords, plug them into a keyword finder, and press enter or start or whatever the go button reads.

The Web service she used came with a came keyword tool, so I decided to give it a spin.  It suggested dozens of words, and next to each word was a number that indicated how many times that word was used in four of the major search engines.  Though, it did not tell her how many times a certain word was used in a specific search engine.

What’s the point?  Be specific in your SEO strategy.  As much as you want to target certain customers, you also want to target certain search engines.  The same word that has high value on Google may not have the same value on Bing.  I suggest using Google’s Keyword Tool.  The more target a specific search engine in your SEO strategy, the easier it will be to rank high on that search engines.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

#social#networking #social#media #social#media#marketing #LinkedIn #Bing

Today’s the last day of the battle between search and social.  So far search leads the way with more Internet users relying on search than on social.  Social won round three yesterday, so the counts 2-1.  Today, search could land the final blow, or social could force a tie.  First, I need to make a correction in this first category.  Even though I looked at sites as they’re ranked in the U.S. according to Alexa, Alexa ranks this first category according to all Internet users.  My apologies.

Now, let’s bring out our last two contenders and see if search can deal a knock-out blow to social.  Introducing, on the search side, Bing.  And on the social side, LinkedIn.

Bing

Only 3.65% of all Internet users use MSN

LinkedIn

Only 2.85% of all Internet users use LinkedIn

Bing

About 7.5% of their traffic comes from search engines

LinkedIn

About 16% of their traffic comes from search engines, which means their traffic would decrease by less than 1% without search engines.

Bing

Immediately before visiting Bing, 5.97% visit Google, 5.44% of their user visited Yahoo!, 4.61% visited Facebook, 4.08% visited Live, and 1.67% visited Youtube.  After leaving Bing, 6.15% visit Google, 5.82% visit Facebook, 5.23% visit Yahoo!, 3.28% visit Live, and 2.48% visit YouTube.  MSN is in there also.

LinkedIn

Immediately before going to LinkedIn, 23.77% of their users visited Google, 11.65% visited Facebook, 4.35% visited Yahoo!, 4.1% visited Twitter, 1.71% visited Live, and 1.07% visited YouTube.  Immediately after leaving LinkedIn, 22.63% of their users go to Google, 12.31% go to Facebook, 4.55% go to Twitter, 3.92% go to Yahoo!, 1.19% go to Live, and 1.1% go to Youtube.

So, what’s the verdict? Search and social need one another. I’m going to call it a tie.  What’s my point in all this?  Make sure you use both to bring people to your website. If someones telling you search is dead, their probably not a good person to hire or work with.

Come back tomorrow for the latest news about social media.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• Bing’s New Social Search a First Tiny Step Toward a Giant Future (blogs.forrester.com)
• Bing Deal Could Extend Reach for Businesses on Facebook (clickz.com)
• Bing And Facebook Merge Search And Social (ghacks.net)
• Social Search: Links are Dead, Social is the New Pagerank (webpronews.com)
• Bing makes friends with Facebook (telegraph.co.uk)
• Welcome to the social: Bing uses Facebook friends to power search (arstechnica.com)
• Yahoo Loses Market Share, Bing Is #2 (wpromote.com)
• Bing Gets Something Google Can’t Get, Facebook Data (seroundtable.com)

#social#networking #Twitter #social#media #windows#Live

So far the four most trafficked sites in the U.S. have been those four I’ve looked at. There are some socialization capabilities to the site ranked 5^th according to Alexa (Amazon), and pretty much anyone can add content to the site ranked 6th (Wikipedia). But I wouldn’t consider them social networking sites. It’s hard to even think of Youtube as a social networking site. Twitter is ranked 7^th according to Alexa, and Microsoft’s search engine Windows Live is ranked 11^th. Here are the numbers:

Twitter

8% of all Internet users use Twitter

Live

14.96% of all Internet users use Live

Twitter

About 6.2% of their users come from search engines, so their user base would decrease by less than 1% without search engines.

Live

About 4.4% of their user come from search engines

Twitter

Immediately before visiting Twitter, 12.04% of their users visited Facebook, 9.48% visited Google, 2.66% visited Youtube, 2.11% visited Yahoo, and .94% visited Live (Twitpic and LinkedIn are in there). Immediately after leaving Twitter 11.28% of their users visit Facebook, 9.48% visit Google, 2.88% visit Youtube, 1.91% visit Yahoo, and  .85% visit Live.

Live

Immediately before visiting Live, 13.64% of their users visited Facebook, 5.81% visited Google, 3.49% visited Yahoo, 2.42% visited Youtube, and to small of a portion of users come from Twitter for Alexa to rank them. Immediately after leaving Live, 14.6% of their users go to Facebook, 4.83% go to Google, 2.86% go to Yahoo!, and 2.07% go to Youtube. I should also mention that 10.79% of all users who use Live come from MSN and 15.94% go to MSN.

It doesn’t appear Twitter and Live have a very good relationship. That’s okay because once again the numbers show that search and social must coexist. Live receives 16.06% of their traffic from social networking sites, and Twitter receives 13.33% of their traffic from search engines. It looks like search needs social a little more than social needs search in this battle. Come by tomorrow as our last two contenders duke it out.



Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• You: The social networking tools you need for business – Feature (earthtimes.org)
• Brand Challenges & Opportunities With Social Media & Mobile (searchengineland.com)
• Digital News Roundup: Oct. 11, 2010 (360i.com)
• Twitter Targets 1 Billion Users, Challenging Facebook for Ads (businessweek.com)
• Twitter predicts it will have 1 billion members (sfgate.com)
• SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 12, 2010 (searchengineland.com)

Let’s continue comparing search and social. Facebook has a long way to go before it catches up to Google, but YouTube and Yahoo! are a little more even. Youtube had a few good days in September and are currently having some good days that have allowed them to rank higher than Yahoo!. And Yahoo! did not start out as a search engine, and YouTube recently started getting more social. Remember, this is all according to Alexa within the U.S.

Yahoo!

In the last three months, 26.49% of all Internet users in the U.S. have used Yahoo!.

YouTube

In the last three months, 24.36% of all Internet users in the U.S. have used YouTube.

Yahoo!

About 7.1% of their traffic comes from search engines.

YouTube

About 15.5% of their traffic comes from search engines, which means their traffic would decrease by 3.77% without search engines.

Yahoo!

Immediately before visiting Yahoo!, 2.1% of  their users visited YouTube, 7.77% visited Facebook, and 8.14% visited Google. Immediately after visiting Yahoo!, 2.28% of their users visit YouTube, 7.62% visit Google, and 8.44% visit Facebook.

YouTube

Immediately before visiting YouTube, 3.13% of visitors visited Yahoo!, 9.61% visited Google, and 12.47% visited Facebook. Immediately after leaving YouTube, 3.02% go to Yahoo!, 9.98% go to Google, and 13.52% go to Facebook.

There’s a correlation in the those who browse the four sites I’ve looked at today and yesterday. Are you starting to see how search and social need one another other? No. Without search engines YouTube would lose 18.02% of their traffic and Facebook would lose 18.72% of their traffic. Without Social networking sites, Yahoo! would lose 9.87% of their traffic and Google would lose 7.63% of their visitors. So, what can we learn from all of this? Search and Social need one another. The numbers continue to show that social needs search more than search needs social, but the battle’s not over! We’ll go two more rounds with two new sites tomorrow.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• Driving real results with YouTube: Questions for aimClear’s Marty Weintraub (smartblogs.com)
• Using YouTube as a Keyword Research Tool for SEO (seomoz.org)
• Alexa: YouTube surpasses Yahoo! as the Internet’s 3rd most visited site (thenextweb.com)
• YouTube OverTakes Yahoo For 3rd Most Visited Site On The Web (reelseo.com)
• Optimizing Your YouTube Videos for Search Engines (compukol.com)